Page 97 - Cataloging and Classification for Library Technicians, 2nd Edition

Classification 83

In di vid ual Lan guages and Lan guage Fam ilies”; Ta ble 5, “Ra cial, Eth-
nic, Na tional Groups”; Table 6, “Lan guages”; and Table 7, “Groups of
Persons.” Please re member that num bers in the ta bles are never used
alone; they are al ways added to the classification num ber. For ex am-
ple, in num ber 810.8, 810 is Amer ican lit erature in Eng lish, the broad
dis ci pline; while .8 rep re sents mis cel la neous writ ings of in di vid ual au-
thors, which is de rived from Ta ble 3.
Last in vol ume one are lists that compare the pre vious edi tion with
the new edi tion: “Re lo ca tions and Re duc tions”; “Com par a tive and
Equivalence Tables”; and “Reused Num bers.” A new book needs to be
classified with a new num ber, of course. De pending on the size of the
library, its bud get, and its staffing sit uation, some libraries may de cide
that it is not cost-ef ficient to reclassify older books, and only new ac -
quisitions will be clas sified ac cording to the twenty-first edi tion.
Volumes two and three are ti tled The Sched ules, which are re ferred
to when de ter min ing the ap pro pri ate num ber for the ma te rial be ing
classified. The sched ules are di vided into ten cat egories of three-digit
numbers, as de scribed earlier. Three sum maries that are par tially re -
produced here give outlines of the or ganization.
Figure 6.1 shows the “First Sum mary,” which di vides the knowl -
edge in the world into ten categories cor responding to dis cipline fields
of study. In per forming the task of classifying, one first must decide
which cat egory de scribes the topic most closely. For ex ample, for a
foreign lan guage dic tionary, 400 is the ap propriate class to choose.
Figure 6.2, the “Sec ond Sum mary,” shows the di visions ap plied to
the sec ond num ber, called the hun dred di visions. This means that for
each of the classes in the “First Sum mary,” ten di visions are formed to
further break down the discipline to make it more spe cific. For ex am-
ple, for a book on ed ucation, it is first de cided that the field Ed u ca tion
belongs to the class of so cial sci ence 300. Fur ther ex amining the
“Sec ond Sum mary” will lead to num ber 370 for Ed ucation.
Figure 6.3, the “Third Sum mary” for class num ber one, shows the
divisions ap plied to the third digit, called the thou sand sec tions. For in -
stance, a book on Higher Ed u ca tion will have the num ber 378, mean -
ing that the broad class is so cial sci ence, the division is ed ucation, and
the sec tion is higher education.
Following the summaries are the main schedules in vol umes two
and three. Class 000 through class 500 are in cluded in volume two, and